Free [Anita Blake Collection] - Strange Candy by Laurell K. Hamilton

smile, and handed the rifle to Jordan. “You better pray you get ten years apiece, because if you don’t…” She knelt beside them. “I’ll hunt you down and shoot you both.”
    â€œHey, lady, it was just an animal.”
    I grabbed Susan and pulled her to her feet before she could slug him.
    Jordan said softly, “I’ll let you have the rifle again.”
    Susan leaned into me. “You’re bleeding.”
    â€œA present from Little Irving.”
    She held my hand in her smaller ones, but I knew she wasn’t trying to stop the blood flow; she was looking at the bite radius. My wife the scientist.
    I missed Irving when we went down to the barricade. No happy snorts, no bubble blowing, no dragon head butting your ribs. It was lonely. Baby Irving is like most of the monsters, shy. The best picture we have is a night shot of ripples on the water. My bite mark did prove our point. Pictures of my hand will make up part of Susan’s report.
    Susan now thinks that all lake monsters are capable of cloning themselves by parthenogenesis. The clone is born at the death of the parent. That would explain why no one has ever seen more than one lake monster at a time. It also explains why both lake monsters that had been autopsied in the past had unborn babies. Pollution killed them all. Irving died from injuries, so his baby lived.
    The problem is that cloning leads to mutation and genetic drift. You need sexual reproduction in a vertebrate to keep the species healthy. Maybe centuries ago the lakes were all connected, but as the land closed in and isolated the monsters, they had to survive long enough to reproduce, so they cloned themselves. The individual genotypes were saved,but there is no known natural way for lake monsters to find mates. Without help from man, lake monsters are probably a dead end. If we don’t kill them off first, that is.
    Little Irving’s birth put a stop to the Lake Monster Breeding Program. Susan was out of a job, but since she is already living in the Enchanted Forest National Park and has full cooperation of the park service, she has a good shot at new grant money. If she gets it, we’ll be studying the sex life of the red-bearded leprechaun. The real question is, are there any female leprechauns? No one has ever seen one. This problem sounds vaguely familiar.
    Susan is happy off on another project to save yet another endangered creature. But I miss Irving, and though Susan would laugh at me probably, I like to think that Irving is somewhere chasing angelic speedboats, or maybe he’s got his own wings. Surely, even God needs a laugh now and then, and Irving is a funny guy, for a monster.

SELLING HOUSES
    This story is set in Anita’s world, but Anita isn’t in it. None of the main or even minor characters are in it. One day I wondered: What are people with less dangerous jobs doing in Anita’s world now that vampires are legally alive? How has it changed other jobs? For instance, real estate…
    T HE house sat in its small yard looking sullen. It seemed to squat close to the ground as if it had been beaten down. Abbie shook her head to clear such strange notions from her mind. The house looked just like all the other houses in the subdivision. Oh, certainly it had type-A elevation. Which meant it had a peaked roof, and it had two skylights in the living room and a fireplace. The Garners had wanted some of the extra features. It was a nice house with its deluxe cedar board siding and half brick front. Its small lot was no smaller than any of the other houses, except for some of the corner lots. And yet…
    Â 
    ABBIE walked briskly up the sidewalk that led through the yard. Daffodils waved bravely all along the porch. They were a brilliant burst of color against the dark-red house. Abbie swallowed quickly, her breath short. She had only talked to Marion Garner on the phone maybe twice, but in those conversations Marion had been